Ever wonder what makes one infographic hit the mark and another one miss? There's more science to it than you might think.

Information graphics – visual representations of information, data, knowledge, or concepts – have been around for millennia, and humans have long mapped data in order to organize what they see, filter out extraneous details, reveal patterns, suggest further exploration, and ultimately better understand the world around them.

"Why should we be interested in visualization? Because the human visual system is a pattern seeker of enormous power and subtlety. The eye and the visual cortex of the brain form a massively parallel processor that provides the highest-bandwidth channel into human cognitive centers. At higher levels of processing, perception and cognition are closely interrelated, which is the reason why the words ‘understanding’ and ‘seeing’ are synonymous.”
(Colin Ware, Information Visualization: Perception for Design, Academic Press, 2000)

Anyone responsible for creating infographics in order to communicate complex information effectively can benefit by taking advantage of lessons from visual perception research.

Prof. Colin Ware, of the Data Visualization Research Lab at the University of New Hampshire, explains:

“… the visual system has its own rules. We can easily see patterns presented in certain ways, but if they are presented in other ways, they become invisible. … The more general point is that when data is presented in certain ways, the patterns can be readily perceived. If we can understand how perception works, our knowledge can be translated into rules for displaying information. Following perception-based rules, we can present our data in such a way that the important and informative patterns stand out. If we disobey the rules, our data will be incomprehensible or misleading.”

One important lesson we can leverage from vision science is an understanding of which elements will prominently “pop out” of an image – thanks to a mechanism known as “pre-attentive processing.” As our brains start to process an image, massively parallel processes detect image elements that are differentiated by low-level characteristics such as form, color, motion, and spatial position. The principles of pre-attentive processing govern which visual elements grab our attention first, before we’ve even begun to consciously process the image.

Here’s a simple example to illustrate the point. Count the number of 9’s appearing in this set of digits:

This time was a lot easier and quicker, thanks to the fact that our brains process lightness pre-attentively.

Some features that are pre-attentively processed include: color (hue and intensity), form (line orientation, line length and width, size, shape, curvature), motion (flicker, direction), and spatial position (2D position, spatial grouping).

For some more pre-attentive fun, visit the demo at this site, choose a feature, and see how immediately and easily your visual system is able to process it.

Understanding what kinds of features are pre-attentively processed has important implications for visual displays. When designing for critical situations such as air traffic control, flight display, or clinical care dashboards, it’s crucial to understand how to make certain symbols or elements stand out from others so they can be interpreted and acted upon immediately.

Likewise, if you’re designing infographics, it’s also important to understand which elements will be seen at first glance – they’re your first chance to grab your reader’s attention, even before conscious processing. Using color, size, shape, orientation, and other pre-attentive attributes, you’ll need to carefully craft which are the most important elements that should “pop out” first.

But choose carefully; not every element of your infographic can stand out. Vision science tells us that pre-attentive elements become less distinct as the assortment of patterns increases. Imagine a bumblebee swarming among flies; the bee is easy to pick out. Now imagine wasps, hornets, and yellowjackets joining the swarm, and the bumblebee will get lost in the mix. So it is with an infographic: As the multitude of competing pre-attentive elements increases, their “power to pop” will be diminished.

Susanne Hupfer, Consultant, IBM Center for Applied Insights
Our director, Steve Rogers, recently interviewed Paul Brunet, IBM Vice President of ISVs, Start-ups, and Academic Programs, about his perspective on the 2012 Tech Trends study. Whether you're an IT or business decision-maker, an academic, or an IT practitioner, you may discover valuable insights and recommendations in their broad-ranging conversation.

IT and business leaders:
Why are CEOs regarding technology and skills as top concerns -- now outranking even market and economic forces? Why is it crucial to leverage emerging technologies for competitive advantage?
Paul discusses four technology areas -- mobile, cloud, social business, and business analytics -- and contrasts adoption and skill levels in mature and growth markets. He covers challenges to adoption -- such as security, skill gaps, and integration -- and explains why security is a business imperative. IT and business decision-makers may also be eager to learn more about the elite "pacesetter" group identified by the study, who are unlocking competitive advantage by being more market-driven, experimental, and analytical.

Academics:
How can academia better monitor the needs of the enterprise and teach relevant skills their students will need upon graduation?
Paul also examines how using sandboxes and collaborative spaces can encourage experimentation, skills development, and collaboration across universities and practitioner areas.

Practitioners:
Where should you be expanding your skills? What traits are IT leaders looking for today?

Paul and Steve talk about the importance of integrating business along with IT skills.

Platform as a service (PaaS) is at a critical stage in its life cycle – with promising business benefits offset by lingering reservations. PaaS promises increased flexibility, lower costs and higher quality IT services, while maintaining control over data and applications. It sits squarely between infrastructure as a service and software as a service, and could prove to be the most transformational of the three main types of cloud computing.

The IBM Center for Applied Insights wanted to explore attitudes around PaaS in order to identify leading practices in PaaS adoption and provide recommendations on how to exploit its potential. We interviewed over 1,500 IT decision makers in 18 countries and a wide range of industries so we could better understand their motivations, experiences and concerns relating to PaaS. This week, we released the results of our exploration in our latest paper “Exploring the frontiers of cloud computing – Insights from platform as a service pioneers”.

The report goes into more detail on the benefits and challenges surrounding PaaS, how to overcome the challenges and what an enterprise can do to start, or continue, their PaaS journey. For a view from cloud pioneers CLD Partners, check out their post on IBM’s Thoughts on Cloud blog. For more information about IBM’s SmartCloud Application Services launch and the study check out a recent article by ZDNet.

The CAI team have spent some time recently musing on the meaning of “thought leadership” – how do you define it and what makes good thought leadership. These may seem like obvious questions but, in my experience, as the amount of content multiplies (web commentary, blogs, social media, and so on), many people are unclear about what is distinctive about thought leadership. Our discussion highlighted some interesting points.

Firstly, there is a hazy line between thought leadership and marketing material. Thought leadership uses fact-based research to analyze a topical client issue and uses this to propose client action. Marketing material, on the other hand, uses assertion to argue the case for a supplier’s products and services. Both have their place. A potential customer would expect to find detail of products and services when accessing suppliers’ websites and point-of-view documents can provide a persuasive case to buy. Effective thought leadership, though, can offer something a little different. It can entice a potential client in, change their perspective on an issue, and increase their levels of trust and confidence in their supplier. It is for this reason that thought leadership features so prominently on the websites of all major IT systems & service providers.

So what makes effective thought leadership? I recently carried out a scan of a number of IT providers websites and the quality varies hugely. The best included several thought provoking articles which were easily accessible, thoroughly researched, and well presented. They made a compelling case for actions which clearly aligned closely with the strategic direction of the supplier. The worst were short opinion pieces which demonstrated a poor appreciation of market dynamics. In determining what makes effective thought leadership I use four categories (borrowing considerably from the analysis carried out by source for consulting.com):

Credible research: This means sufficient depth and breadth of data collection (perhaps using a customer survey) plus analysis which has rigour, yet can be understood by the reader.

Client appeal: It must draw the client in – to pick up the report/article and to carry on reading. To do this it must tackle an issue of immediate client interest and be written from the clients’ point of view, offering practical recommendations and demonstrating outcomes.

Distinctive: It must say something new, different which makes a difference (i.e. it qualifies as newsworthy).

Effective messaging: It must draw the reader almost subliminally to a set of messages which are aligned to the suppliers’ agenda. It this is done too obviously, the research and analysis loses credibility.

These are important things to remember as we work on crafting our own thought leadership. Our discussion then moved on to the characteristics of effective thought leaders – suggested role models ranged from the journalist & populariser of concepts Malcolm Gladwell to the UK-based wit Stephen Fry, with 4 million Twitter followers. Perhaps we can explore this subject on another post.